Nagoya City poster titled “Pleasant Communication with Simple Japanese”. Note the play on words for “Nagoya” and “pleasant” (nagoyaka)

“Cheers, mate.” It’s a cold January night in Hokkaido, Japan, the snow is knee-high and we’re sheltering in a ramen shop. I am with friends visiting from Australia, and most had never seen snow until a few days ago.

We’re a mixed group. One of my friends is speaking clearly, slowly, pointing to the menu, adding in “arigatō” and bowing. Another talks as though he’s still in Australia, whether the other party speaks fluent English or only a few words. Just a few days prior the situation was reversed, and this same friend shook his head saying, “Why do they talk to me as though I speak Japanese?”

Obviously it goes both ways. And maybe these encounters are less a question of which language we speak, and more of how we think about those who don’t.

Over my seven years of living in Japan, almost every day has involved some type of multilingual interaction. I’ve seen people across languages either overcompensate or undercompensate for the other party’s perceived lack of understanding. In doing so, we tend to either ignore language barriers, or conversely imagine them up, yet both are problematic.

No one wants to be patronised as a competent language user, and no one wants to be ignored or even belittled as a language learner.

With occasional pride but usually chagrin, I’ve been on all sides of these assumptions at one point or another. Over recent years I’ve reflected on such encounters, including my own incorrect assumptions, and tend to hit upon a pattern of two main factors. The first is assumptions about the other person’s language ability. The second is our perceptions about how best to respond to people in light of those language abilities.

The first factor of assumptions can often be mitigated through an open-mind, by avoiding a priori judgements, and being proactive and observant enough to gauge someone’s language ability through their actual language use. By and large, this approach takes little more than practice, awareness and the willingness to stave off our assumptions.

The second issue of how best to respond, and especially how to cater for less confident language learners’ needs, is more complex. It’s also rarely discussed, at least beyond academic and pedagogical circles, and in the everyday lives of the people actually engaging in such interactions. What I will introduce today, therefore, are several practical examples of Japanese language support, in both its productive and counterproductive forms. For ease of comparison and to provide concrete examples, focus will be dominantly on written Japanese language.

Simplifying Language, Done Right

Let’s start with the concept of Yasashī Nihongo. Yasashī Nihongo (やさしい日本語) literally translates as easy or kind Japanese. It’s useful in situations where Japanese learners lack ready access to translations or interpreting services in their own languages. Other people may choose to interact with people or written texts in Japanese, but find this process easier with language support.

Sample article from NHK’s News Web and News Web Easy. News Web Easy title reads “Students Helping People in Wheelchairs in Event at Ise Shrine”

What then, does Yasashī Nihongo look like in practice? The bright yellow poster in Figure 1 from the Nagoya City website is a good example. In it, two rows of people hold up sketchbooks, each containing a difficult word or phrase. This may be a term in intermediate, formal Japanese, or a loanword requiring knowledge of English or other languages. Arrows point to everyday, simple expressions, which are more accessible for Japanese learners. Both the poster and the Nagoya City website publishing it highlight the value of such communication methods in everyday life, and during emergencies or natural disasters.

Beyond mere simplification of vocabulary, there are many ways to increase language accessibility. Another example is the NHK website News Web Easy. A quick visual comparison of one and the same article in its Yasashī Nihongo version and regular Japanese version shows differences in form and complexity,  even without an understanding of Japanese.

Font and line size adjustments have been made. Spaces, absent from most Japanese writing, have been added between words, and phonetic furigana readings are visible above the kanji (the more complex Chinese-based symbols, separate from the Japanese syllabaries). The text, and noticeably the title, have been simplified and shortened, making the whole Yasashī article 23% shorter than the original. Other changes include colour coding names, a hover over function showing definitions for underlined words, a reduced speed audio version of the text, and even additional images or graphics.

Remembering the concept of meeting learners’ needs in light of their language ability, a final feature of the website is adjustment options for the level of simplification. This includes hiding the colour coding and phonetic furigana readings, and links to view the original article in standard Japanese. This allows readers to tailor or gradually increase difficulty, similar to the scaffolding process in language learning.

Simplifying Language, Done Wrong

There are other instances of Yasashī Nihongo that are less positive, and lack the multimodal accessibility of the previous example. Below is a sample from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s website, “COVID-19 Vaccine Navi”. This website also has a Yasashī Nihongo option, indeed it is one of only three language options (the other two being Japanese and English).

Created during the pandemic, this website has developed since I first came across it in mid 2022, and was like many foreign nationals looking for vaccine information. At that time, the texts for the Yasashī Nihongo version and the regular Japanese version were identical. No simplification had taken place and while phonetic readings for kanji were included, these were in full-sized parentheses beside the original words.

2023 sample from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s website. Which text looks more approachable?

The result was a text linguistically no less confusing, but visually and structurally disjointed, and dauntingly twice the length. I consulted with other speakers of Japanese as a second language, and all agreed that we would rather read the original Japanese than the “easy” version.

Since this time, the Covid Navi website has thankfully improved. However, this was done in an inconsistent manner. Some sections have been paraphrased into simpler versions of the Japanese text, while others keep the same wording as the original. Some sections keep the phonetic readings for kanji in parenthesis, while others only have the phonetic readings, having removed the kanji characters entirely. Also absent from these pages are any different formatting techniques, such as spacing between words and lines, or a larger font size. These internal inconsistencies and missed potential for increased accessibility suggest there is still room for improvement for the website.

Implications

So what do these different instances of Yasashī Nihongo tell us? Clearly there are positive and negative ways of making language accessible. It is noteworthy that organisations, particularly governmental ones, are taking steps in the right direction, but how effective these steps are, and why they have taken so long, remains in question.

If we are not meeting the needs of language learners, it is a sign that we need better education about language learning processes and challenges, and more importantly, chances to hear the voices of language learners about their own accessibility needs. The earlier version of the corona vaccine information website strongly suggested to me (and those I shared it with) that no learner of Japanese as a second language had been consulted in its construction.

Providing language support is more than just ticking a box. While it is frustrating to be overcompensated for as an adept language user, it can be distressing and even have detrimental consequences to be neglected as a language learner. This is why language accessibility support in particular deserves attention, and not only in organisations publishing written materials. We have opportunities within our everyday interactions, both to be more vocal about our needs as language learners, and to consider the effects for other language learners, positive or negative, of how we communicate.

Referenced Websites

City of Nagoya. (2017, November 30). Yasashī nihongo no pēji [Easy Japanese page]. https://mt.adaptive-techs.com/httpadaptor/servlet/HttpAdaptor?.h0.=fp&.ui.=citynagoyahp&.ro.=kh&.st.=rb&.np.=/kurashi/category/395-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. (2023). Shingata korona uirusu wakuchin o utte morau koto no oshirase [Information about receiving novel coronavirus vaccines]. Corona Vaccine Navi. https://v-sys.mhlw.go.jp/ja-pl/
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. (2023). Shingata korona uirusu wakuchin sesshu no sōgō an’nai [General information about novel coronavirus vaccine injections]. Corona Vaccine Navi. https://v-sys.mhlw.go.jp/
NHK. (2023, September 18). Isejingū kurumaisu demo kigaru ni sanpai o chūkōkōsei borantia ga kaijo [Ise Shrine: Easy access for shrine visits even in wheelchairs: Middle and high school students volunteer assistance]. NHK News Web. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20230918/k10014199131000.html
NHK. (2023, September 20). Isejingū de seito-tachi ga kurumaisu no hito o tetsudau ibento [“Students helping people in wheelchairs in event at Ise Shrine”]. NHK News Web Easy. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10014199131000/k10014199131000.html